


Uncanny

by Owlship



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Gen, Mutant Powers, Originally Posted on Tumblr, X-men Inspired, max is pretty much wolverine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-12
Updated: 2018-06-12
Packaged: 2019-05-15 17:18:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,211
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14794676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Owlship/pseuds/Owlship
Summary: He can smell that no one in the rig is human- he doesn't know what to call those like him, but they have an extra dimension to their scents that he can pick out from meters away- but other than the girl flickering in and out of different skins so easily and often he couldn't even begin to count how many people there actually are in the rig, he has no idea of what any of them cando, if they're any threat to him.





	Uncanny

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted [on tumblr](http://v8roadworrier.tumblr.com/post/151579190371/12-so-i-was-vague-watching-the-first-x-menmovie)!

"Let me see your hand," the girl with hair like blood says, reaching between the front seats.

He pulls away and hunches in on himself a little further. The pain's gone, the itch of healing bones is gone- only the dried blood on his skin remains to show he was ever injured.

"I can heal it," she says, intent like she _needs_ to be doing something in the wake of the pregnant woman falling, clipped wings flailing and that unearthly glow snuffed out under the crush of wheels.

He can smell that no one in the rig is human- he doesn't know what to call those like him, but they have an extra dimension to their scents that he can pick out from meters away- but other than the girl flickering in and out of different skins so easily and often he couldn't even begin to count how many people there actually are in the rig, he has no idea of what any of them can _do_ , if they're any threat to him.

"He doesn't need it," the short-haired one from the backseat pipes up.

"Don't say that," the first replies, turning to her sharply. "No one deserves pain."

"I _mean_ ," she says, "he's already healed."

He wonders how she could know this from her seat in the back, and flicks his gaze to her in the mirror. Her eyes meet his through the glass and in his head he hears a voice that none of his ghosts have ever used say, " _you_ are _completely feral, aren't you?_ "

He shakes his head harshly with a growl, the makeshift wheel jerking as he tries to rid himself of the feeling of someone in his mind. The rig drives steadily on as if the steering column isn't connected to anything.

"Toast," Furiosa says rebukingly.

"I just wanted to see if he was still going to kill us," she says, arms crossed and face unrepentant.

If anyone else says something it fades away into the background and he is suddenly in another time, another place. The air is clean and someone lays a hand on his shoulder, gentle. The vision breaks apart with a sound like burning leaves as swiftly as it came, leaves him on edge and unsure if he's in the same place as he was before.

Furiosa says something and it cuts through the lingering haze. It sounds as if she's repeating herself. "I'm going down to do repairs."

He nods, shaky, and when she's gone the redhead climbs out the broken door with binoculars in her hand and disappears as well.

The remaining girls- and girl- _flicker-_ man- _flicker-_ woman _-flicker-_ boy, a dizzying swirl he still isn't sure is actually happening outside his mind- curl in on themselves, sorting through the bag of guns he'd accumulated and talking quietly.

Night creeps up on them and when they're passing out food he's given a share the same as the rest, the girl with white-blonde hair holding each piece of bruised vegetable and tired greens until they're suddenly fresh and crisp and bright again.

It's not as much of a surprise as it could be that the War Boy turns back up, the foot without a boot hard-soled and calloused like leather. He already knows that the kid is the type that's hard to kill, even ignoring the dose of quick-healing blood pumping through his veins.

Stalking off into the night is something of a relief, a concrete goal that ends with blood in his nostrils and on his claws and across the sand. He doesn't know why his knee always hurts when everything else heals over in seconds but it does, dull or sharp or almost unnoticeable but still always _there_ , usually worse after he does work like this.

When he switches into the driver's seat the next day, he finally sees what it is that Furiosa can do. In between scanning the horizon for whatever landmarks she can remember she slides her prosthesis off her shoulder and brings out a small detailing kit, and he finds himself captivated by the way the metal limb keeps moving fluidly, even completely detached from her body.

The rig jerks to the side, back onto the marginally-more-packed trackway they've been following, and he realizes that he's let them drift. He hadn't corrected for that drift though, and Furiosa slants him a look, eyebrow raised, before going back to her tuning.

He focuses on driving after that.

There's something in the air that's making him nervous, something drifting in from the windows, but he can't place what it is.

It's a struggle to not turn the wheel and steer them away from the Bait woman in her tower, but he doesn't because Furiosa has already jumped out, is reciting her lineage with an ease he envies in the back of his mind.

His sensitive ears can hear every word that's being exchanged, how her voice goes from the closest to happy he's heard her sound to silent, to a scream that rocks through him and sets his own mind screaming as well in a spasm of tumbling betrayed memories.

The uneasy feeling only grows, until he's been directed to park the rig and he looks out and realizes that it's salt he's smelling, salt stretching out below him to the darkening horizon. He feels tension coiling inside him and sits apart from the others as they talk, connecting and reconnecting, showing off what they can do and sharing what they have.

For something to do and in hopes of being able to use it the next time he wakes with his mind a swirl of nothing but sensations lacking thought or context, he pokes his skin to make a map, blood the most reliable ink he has, and stares at the vast glittering expanse of salt in front of them. The women are talking about what might be on the other side and he feels himself dying over and over, his body sucked of all moisture and burning under the scorching sun only to heal and start the torture over anew.

There isn't anything out there. He laughs to himself, a dark low noise, when they estimate how far their supplies can stretch and say surely that's long enough. He can't keep track of days well enough to have a number to give them but it would take far, far more than a hundred and sixty to find anything livable.

Even having overheard their conversation it's still a surprise when Furiosa takes him aside to lay out the idea of crossing the Salt. He hadn't overheard her asking if he can have one of their precious bikes and it startles him, scares him to realize that for a moment he considers it. He can't even remember his own _name_ and yet he considers following these people, considers trying to be enough to keep them safe.

"No, I'll ah, make my own way," he hears himself say. The salt feels like it's choking him again even from up here, and all he can see is them falling one by one as white crystals encrust their bodies.

She lets out a quiet breath and nods her head a little like she isn't surprised and he can't look at her, can't look away.

He licks his lips and tastes salt already on them, remembers the way they'd cracked and bled and healed, over and over long past the time he thought he should have died. "You know," he says as she starts walking away, "Hope is a mistake." She pauses and looks back at him, and he's glad for the darkness to hide the brightness of her gaze. "If you can't fix what's broken, you'll um… you'll go insane."

He listens to her walk back across the sand and then tries to block out his hearing altogether so he doesn't have to hear the disappointment in her voice when she tells the women that he's not going with them.

In the morning he watches them get on their bikes and ride into the Salt and it claws up the inside of his throat, the knowledge that they're going to die. He feels rooted to the spot because surely they're smart enough to know to turn around, to recognize that it's futile trying to cross the Salt. Then the memories start jolting through him, a jumble of his own attempted death on a plain of endless white and of other people screaming and crying and going silent, flashes of sound and sight.

He shakes his head like an animal but they don't go away, until he blinks and suddenly his vision is filled with green, green he recognizes. Green that might have a future, might have hope. One of his memories calls to him from the tire-tracks the group has left and he doesn't remember getting on the (stupidly, decadently overloaded) bike, but he's catching up to them fast.

Things start falling apart in the middle of the battle. Even with Furiosa's iron-will control the War Rig falters, gets slowed enough for enemies on fucking poles to jump aboard. He takes a crossbow bolt directly to the forehead and everything goes black and silent for a blissful moment before the world restarts, and he's up even as he feels the hole it left through his skull and brain closing millimeter by millimeter.

He falls and hangs above wheels that won't kill him but _will_ see him falling behind, caught by her metal arm, and hears her scream, smells her blood.

Everything seems to happen at once. There's fire and screaming and the roar of engines, and he catches a flash of their healer's red hair in the wrong car, can still smell Furiosa's blood winding its way to him.

He catches up to her just before she falls and he can't remember the last time he was so scared, watches her get paler and paler, hears every strained breath loud in his ears.

Capable watches with wide eyes and mumbles over and over, "I can't heal that, I don't know how to fix her, _I can't heal her_ -"

He doesn't know how either until the Vuvalini tells one of the girls why Furiosa's breathing sounds like that, so harsh and grating in his ears, and one of the shocks of memory settles into place. He picks up a knife and he apologizes as he stabs her on the opposite side of her chest, the trapped air rushing out in a gasp that's echoed through the car.

She opens her eyes and sucks in deep breaths and he thinks she's okay, thinks he fixed her, but after she whispers one last instruction to him she goes slack again.

He turns to Capable because she can heal this now, it's just a cut, just a deep cut that's all, and she reaches out with her hands to try but he can tell it isn't nearly enough.

"She's exsanguinated," the Vuvalini says like a harbinger of inevitability, "Drained all her blood."

He fumbles for the needle and the tubing with fingers that have never felt so clumsy because he has blood to spare, can drain himself for days and days and would do so without second thought if it means she opens her eyes again, if she stops being so cold and still.

The needle goes into her arm and it has to be enough, it has to.

He cradles her head in his hands and casts about in his worm-eaten mind for anything else he can do for her, any other way he can help her heal. It's a shock to him when out of his mouth trips, "Max. My name is Max."

His eyes flicker around the car, terrified of what it means to remember, terrified of how much he wants her to know this. She'd asked him for his name once and he couldn't have remembered even if he had wanted to tell her then, and now it's there as if he'd never forgotten. "That's my name," he says directly to her lax face, feeling every pulse of blood that leaves him to fill out her veins instead and daring to hope that it's enough.

Furiosa stays quiet for a nerve-wracking length of time, long enough for Capable to exhaust herself into passing out, her hands as bloody-red as her hair. He stays hovering near her, senses trained on her heartbeat, until at last the Vuvalini tells him that if he gives any more blood she'll have enough in her veins to do more harm than good.

She finally opens her eyes when the Citadel is on the horizon and they're changing drivers, planning how to approach. She sits up off the table like she's exhausted but not like she's bleeding out, and he feels relief settle over him like a physical force.

By the time he jumps from the lift platform, between Capable's healing and his blood even Furiosa's bruises have started lightening. Max meets her gaze as she's lifted up and up, holds his name and the image of her standing tall and victorious in his mind, and knows that this is a memory that won't slip through the cracks of his fractured brain so easily.


End file.
